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In the past five years or so the Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has managed to pull itself out of the niche market to be a proper competitor in the big leagues.

This year, however, it made a huge deal with T-Mobile which brought it first time ever to American carriers. Before the OnePlus 6T, released October 29th, OnePlus have had to rely only on its own online channels.

Now that they have their foot in the door for the first time, you would expect an improvement in the sales figure, right?

Well, it turns out that is exactly what you get. According to XDA, OnePlus.com and T-Mobile combined sales for OnePlus 6T was 86% higher on the first day than sales was for OnePlus 6 earlier this year.

Now, this is only the first day, we'll have to see how the rest of the quarter goes. However, it could be argued that T-Mobile carrying the phone will be even more important in the coming months that enthusiasts aren't the ones buying the device.

Netflix has announced that it will release a documentary called Our Planet, featuring Sir David Attenborough himself, in early 2019.

The nature documentary follows in the footsteps of BBC documentaries Planet Earth and Blue Planet, both of which were narrated by the great Attenborough.

Netflix ordered Our Planet from the makers of the shows mentioned as early as 2015, but at that point it wasn't announced that Attenborough would be narrating.

The premiere of Our Planet is set for April 5 and it includes eight full length episodes all of which will bring amazing 4K imagery of the amazing ecosystems of our planet.

The 92-year-old Attenborough will be included in Netflix for all of the English speaking world but Netflix is also looking to recruit local talent to bring localized narration in some regions.

Both Planet Earth and Blue Planet are available on Netflix, so you can warm up for the Attenborough marathon in April.

Netflix has recently revealed new content from Asia. As the company is diversifying the content and bringing in Asian productions especially anime lovers should rejoice.

The streaming giant announced 17 new Originals from Asia that will increase next year's Asian coverage to a 100 new and returning Originals. This includes new Pacific Rim and Altered Carbon anime.

Previous Asian Originals have included the Indian thriller Sacred Games, japanese anime DEVILMAN crybaby, and Korean comedy BUSTED! that has also been confirmed for a second season.

Netflix also increases the content with local languages, which includes The Stranded from Thailand and Taiwanese Triad Princess. A new trailer from the Korean series Kingdom was released.

In addition to news from Asia, the company released a new trailer for the upcoming spin-off Narcos: Mexico, and revealed the launch date, December 7, for the anticipated triple A feature film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, featuring talent such as Andy Serkis, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Disney unveiled in 2017 that it won't continue working with Netflix after 2019. This wasn't a case of Netflix doing anything wrong necessarily, except racking profits.

See, Disney has been working on their own streaming service for years now, and finally they are ready to announce its launch.

Disney has revealed during the quarterly report that the upcoming streaming service will be launched in late 2019. As expected this coincides with the expiration of Netflix cooperation.

The service will be called Disney+ – not very original, I know – and in addition to Disney branded material it will include content from Pixar, National Geographic, as well as Marvel. Exclusive Star Wars content is also expected to land on the service.

Disney of course bought 21st Century Fox in December 2017, which gave them full access to Marvel characters among other things.

It remains to be seen how this affects Netflix. Especially when it comes to children's programming Disney should be a strong contender.

Google's latest and greatest smartphone, the Pixel 3, is definitely one of the most anticipated smartphones of the year. Unlike last year, if you remember the screen issues et al, it seems Google has avoided most of the pitfalls and controversies.

Now, however, a customer has received a device that was broken straight out of the package, and posted about it on Reddit. Well, we shouldn't say broken, it was more like smashed, tortured, and nearly disintegrated.

Not only were the back and front glass panels broken, the phone was bent and there were even cracks through the USB jack. The package told the same story, both the retail package as well as the brown parcel wrap were squished.

Of course we can't blame Google for all this, after all it was Fedex who delivered this mess. But the story doesn't end there.

After contacting the Google customer service, it was simply treated as a regular RMA. This of course means that there is no quick fix, and the customer who had to wait for a month for the initial delivery has to now wait quite a bit more.

After followups the customer hasn't heard back from Google.

Volkswagen is set to take on Tesla Motors and other manufacturers of electrics with its own all-electric that it aims to sell for less than €20,000, or about $23,000.

The German automaker is planning to convert three factories to make the all-electric vehicles, according to reports. Reuters cites a source in reporting that plans for the "MEB entry" will be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on November 16.

Plans call for a production volume of the all-electric vehicle in the 200,000 range. It also has plans for an electric van, the ID Buzz, according to the source.

Volkswagen is also set to discuss alliances with SK Innovation, a battery cell manufacturer. Its plans to enter the all-electric space comes at a time when cities are moving against diesel cars over health and pollution concerns associated with the vehicles. Additionally, Volkswagen has been working on its image since it was revealed that it had cheated diesel emissions tests.

Source: Reuters News Agency

Amazon has released an Alexa App for Windows 10 that is available to download now.

It has already been present on some Windows 10 devices but is not being rolled out to users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. It will be rolled out to other territories next year.

To access it, users will have to use a hotkey or clicking a button, although some devices will support the use of the Alexa app hands-free. You can use the Alexa app to control things like music playback and smart home devices but there are some early limitations.

For example, there is no initial support for the Pandora or Spotify music apps. It also cannot be used to control voice or video calls. Those features will be supported soon, however.

More info: www.microsoft.com

Nintendo Switch users can now watch YouTube videos on the console, with support for 360-degree content.

The availability of YouTube for Nintendo Switch was strongly hinted at in recent weeks. It became available for the console on Thursday and can be used in handheld mode or docked to the television. To control YouTube on Switch, the user will need to use the right Joy-Con's analog stick.

One interesting nugget is that the Joy-Con can be used to control 360-degree videos on YouTube, meaning you won't have to physically move as you do on phones and other devices.

With YouTube on Switch you can access music videos, gaming live streams and everything in your YouTube subscriptions.

More Info: www.nintendo.com

Via: Engadget

Innovation used to be Samsung's ticket to success with ever better Android phones. As often happens with large companies, Samsung kind of forgot to innovate.

Recently the Korean conglomerate has tried to revive its roots in hardware innovation by introducing new features first in cheaper devices. This happened with the Galaxy A series phone earlier this year that features four cameras.

However, yesterday's Samsung event unveiled an innovation that the company has been working on for years and years.

The new Infinity Flex display makes it possible to create foldable smartphones/tablets. They even showed off one at the dimly lit stage.

Clearly Samsung doesn't want you to see the device yet, but the concept is there. It looks like the phone is extremely thick, which seems given if you fold any tablet in half.

Not that it matters really, since the device is very likely a prototype for a concept that hasn't even sure to hit the market.

Not to say Samsung isn't determined to bring it to the people. In fact, it seems that Samsung really needs something like this to turn the ship around.

Spotify will allow free tier users of its music streaming service to use its Connect function to stream music to devices.

Spotify Connect allows users to use devices on the same WiFi network to play music. These devices can be games consoles, media set-top boxes, Windows PCs and more. The user can continue to select music using their phone or other devices through Connect.

The feature has been limited to Spotify's premium subscribers to this point. However, the music streaming giant will allow users of its ad-supported service to use Connect soon with compatible devices. Of course, they will still hear ads and still have other limitations of the free tier.

Spotify has been loosening restriction on free tier users recently, allowing on-demand listing for some selected playlists. It has also experimented with skippable ads down under.

Source: The Verge

YouTube has removed clips of Red Dead Redemption 2 after a BBC report pointed out videos showing a non-playable character being assaulted and killed.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in October to critical acclaim and staggering sales. Like its predecessor, it allows the player to control the protagonist in a sandbox environment. The player can interact with other non-playable characters in a variety of ways, and the game even has an honor system that reflects the moral values of the player.

Just like with Grand Theft Auto and many similar games, this freedom can allow the protagonist to carry out seemingly violent action against non-playable characters, or NPCs. Some of these actions may seem distasteful.

After the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, plenty of videos of gameplay footage flooded to YouTube as can be expected. Some videos were of the protagonist assaulting or killing an NPC suffragette.

The BBC News website clearly took offense to this footage and went as far as to question YouTube about the videos. As a result, YouTube deleted eight of ten videos the BBC complained about. Furthermore, an unnamed YouTuber with over 470,000 subscribers reportedly had his YouTube account deleted after the BBC complaint.

Google reveals it paid out more than $3 billion to rights' holders through its Content ID tool on YouTube.

Content ID is part of Google's anti-piracy measures on the YouTube platform. It compares content uploaded by users to a database covering millions of works that are subject to copyright. When it detects that a user has uploaded content protected by the system, it enables the real content owner to monetize the video and earn advertising revenue.

It has been criticized at times as too little by copyright holders, and also as too much by some users caught up in bogus claims. The $3 billion payout shows that the system works to compensate creators when their content is put on the service without authorization.

Sometimes users find that their content is monetized even when their use of content falls under fair use provisions. Google has fought that by allowing the third party to earn as well.

Google has invested more than $100 million in Content ID so far.

In addition, YouTube has also paid out over $1.8 billion between October 2017 and September 2018 to the music industry from advertising revenue. To fight piracy, Google has removed more than 3 billion links to infringing content from Search disapproved more than 10 million ads suspected of copyright infringement or that link to infringing sites.

Recently a phenomenon called Initiative Q has been making rounds in the social media. The website – all that it is for now – promises a new revolutionary payment system, but what is it really?

Initiative Q is spreading via invites on social media. Currently the company is trying to raise awareness and increase subscriber base by offering free money.

Well, actually it's free Q money. The currency they are hoping to establish is called Q, and you'll get some amount of it for both joining and inviting others.

The sooner you join, the more you get. According to the website the earliest adopters might get Q worth of $100,000, although that would require a Q economy worth trillions.

Sounds like a pyramid scheme, doesn't it? Fortunately you don't have to invest in this venture, so as far as losing money goes you should be safe.

As a digital currency, is it the next Bitcoin? Again, no. There's really not much in common, although there isn't much detail about how it all works at this point.

What is certain, though, is that Q is not a decentralized and it's not based in a blockchain technology. According to the founder of Initiative Q this is because Q aims to be mainstream.

With ARKit Apple has cemented itself as one of the players in the alternative reality race. Apple's implementation, as is suggested by the API name, is Augmented Reality (AR) which relies heavily on camera tech.

The processing prowess is already largely there for Apple to improve AR applications but there's still some limitations to iPhone cameras that need to be overcome.

According to a reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is developing a new version of Face ID to bolster iPhone's AR capabilities, MacRumors reports.

Upgraded Face ID would bring better depth sensing with what is called a Time of Flight (ToF) technology. Kuo is suggesting the technology will be introduced in iPhones and iPads in 2019 or 2020.

Music business is tough, they say, but streaming music business might be tougher. If there's one streaming service that has been through it all, it's Spotify.

Even after fierce resistance from industry, they managed to cement themselves as the number one spot to enjoy your music. The king of music streaming turned the tide of piracy, one could argue.

It hasn't managed to turn itself profitable, however.

Spotify has revealed that it has passed 87 million Premium subscribers, an increase of four million since July. Last quarter still turned out on red.

All is not lost, though, by any means. Quite the opposite in fact. The loss was only around $7 million, a significant step towards profitability for the company. Previous quarter Spotify still lost over $83 million (73 million euro), according to THR.

Spotify has another 100 million – or 104 to be exact – free tier users who are yet to be converted into Premium subscribers.

The pace to convert new subscribers has slowed down, as is expected when services mature, but it still has a significant lead on Apple Music which is probably closing in on 60 million after reaching 50 million users in May.